


November 24th: Fifth Year

by thecruciblegavemeyou



Series: Carry On Countdown 2016 [2]
Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-25 06:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9807671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecruciblegavemeyou/pseuds/thecruciblegavemeyou





	

He still hadn’t returned to the dorm. He’d stayed out late the past few nights, and when I asked Dev and Niall where he was, they just shrugged.

When I asked Baz, he just sneered. “I was in the library, studying, Snow. Some of us want to do things after Watford.”

I know he wasn’t in the library, “For the last time Simon, I swear I was the only one in the library last night!” Penny groaned.

He must’ve been plotting in the catacombs again. I followed him out three nights ago, but he must’ve known I was following him because he made an effort to lose me when we reached the White Chapel. I still saw him slip into the catacombs. I wonder if he has a way of contacting the Old Families from down there. Maybe there’s tunnels or illegal magicked phones. Maybe Headmistress Pitch set up a base for the Old Families before she died.

Baz was always plotting. Plotting our final battle, the showdown where we both knew only one of us would make it out alive. I had heard Fiona Pitch, Baz’s aunt, scold him about it once. She’d dropped him off after a weekend in the city, and she began ranting about how Baz was the one who would have to do the deed. I left after that. I don’t really want to know how Baz plans to kill me.

Sometimes I have dreams that I was the Chosen One and Baz wasn’t a tool for the Old Families. We were still roommates. But that time around we were friends and Agatha was my girlfriend and Penny studied with Baz instead of dragging me to the library all the time. But none of it was real when I woke up. Baz was already slamming the window shut, and generally making as much noise as possible before stealing my shower time.

But now I was walking across the Great Lawn, I’d agreed to help Penny in the library tonight.

She was already there when I walked in. I’m surprised she noticed me, she was sitting at a desk and had one little lamp on, illuminating a mess of papers and notes and sticky notes. “They’re all the same color, Penny, they just make things more complicated to find!”

She’d wanted to study something about Magickal Creatures tonight. I think she mentioned merwolves? She hated the merwolves, almost as much as Baz did (sometimes Baz would sit by the moat and taunt them, throwing rocks and rotten apples).

“Simon! Finally, you’re a half hour late! Where were you?” She was a wrinkled mess. Her cape was slung across the chair (Penny loved her cape, I thought it made me looked like a git, so I never wore it) and her glasses were falling down her face, and her frizzy blue hair was pulled back out of her face as usual. She never wore it down. Ever. Once I asked her why she didn’t just cut it all off. “The one time I tried, Mum had a fit.”

“Well, Baz still hasn’t come back yet-” she cut me off with a wave of the hand, rolling her eyes. Ags and Pen hated when I mentioned Baz. Apparently I talked about him too much, but I don’t know where the line is when you’re talking about your roommate that’s plotting to kill you.

“What’s with you this year, Si? You talk about Baz even more than usual.” She mused, cracking open another book and handing it to me.

“He’s just so suspicious, all the time! He’s always sneaking out or coming back late, and he’s barely said anything. I swear Penny, he’s plotting, in the catacombs-”

“You and Baz don’t even talk, Simon. Start looking for info on merwolves. I want to know how to get rid of them.”

“Penny! The Mage put them in the moat to protect Watford, you can’t kill the merwolves.”

She began muttering under her breath, “Not yet, I can’t. Someday.”

I started skimming the pages of the hunking book she gave me. The pages were yellow and half the words were faded out.

And that’s when I saw it. A sketch, of vampires backed against a wall in the catacombs.

Suppression of dark creature uprisings in the early 1200s.

It all clicked. “Pen, Baz is a vampire!”

“Excuse me?”

“Look,” I shoved the book into her hands, “it all makes sense! The catacombs are filled with rats and corpses and Merlin knows what, and Baz is always freezing, and he’s so pale, and he never gets sick, you know, I tested it actually, I tried coughing on his pillow one time, you remember when I had the flu really bad in third year? But even then-”

“Are you actually accusing your roommate of being a vampire, Si?” I’ve asked her a thousand times to teach me to raise one eyebrow like that. I just can’t do it.

“It makes so much sense! He’s evil, Penny.”


End file.
